A Torrent of Moving Images: Free Online Videos for Women’S Studies by Phyllis Holman Weisbard
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
A TORRENT OF MOVING IMAGES: FREE ONLINE VIDEOS FOR WOMEN’S STUDIES by Phyllis Holman Weisbard Instructors teaching in 2009 face classrooms full of “digital natives” who have had the Internet at their fin- gertips for most of their lives. One of the characteristics of this tribe is greater appreciation for visual stimuli, which on the plus side can translate into more sophisticated ability to decode images. On the other hand, it puts an onus on teachers to provide visuals as well as text in lectures, discussions, and assignments. For many women’s studies instructors, YouTube has been a godsend (or goddessend if you prefer), with its short videos, clips, and mash-ups. YouTube has also come to the rescue when shrinking university library budgets can’t afford to pur- chase documentaries at institutional prices of $300 and more, and instructors make do with online trailers or excerpts. But there is a whole world of women/gender-focused, academically relevant, downloadable or streaming images beyond YouTube that are worth exploring. This article will describe some major sites and methods for discovering these resources. Google Video Given the endless looping of interconnectivity that is the Internet, many videos are accessible through sev- eral sites. The most comprehensive way to find them is through Google, especially Google Video (http://video. google.com). Even though Google owns YouTube, anyone looking for free videos should also search Google Vid- eo — unless and until Google mergers these two entities. Like YouTube, Google Video hosts material uploaded by individuals, but it also is the part of Google that indexes ready-to-view videos hosted elsewhere, including some indexed by other Internet indexes. According to the Google Video site, it indexes “millions of videos... an ever-growing collection of TV shows, movie clips, music videos, documentaries, personal productions and more from all over the Web.” The largest single source of items indexed by Google Video is YouTube, although not everything in YouTube appears to be indexed (yet?) in Google Video. The advanced search screens on both Google Video and YouTube allow users to limit results by duration (short: under four minutes; medium: four to twenty minutes; and long: over twenty minutes). At present, Google Video may be a better source for longer videos (over twenty minutes), as the chart below illustrates for sample searches: VIDEOS 4–20 MINUTES LONG Search Terms Number of Hits Google Video Number of Hits in YouTube women 97,800 588,000 feminist or feminism 4,030 3,630 gender 8,080 20,000 VIDEOS OVER 20 MINUTES LONG Search Terms Number of Hits in Google Video Number of Hits in YouTube women 4,820 ,0 feminist or feminism 653 8 gender 568 44 . “What is Google Video?” http://video.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=66485&ctx=sibling, accessed November 5, 2008. It is often difficult through Google Video and the other sites mentioned in this article to find bibliographic information on the sites themselves about the videos. In many cases I have used other sources, including WorldCat, to provide the names of filmmakers, production companies, and production dates. Feminist Collections (v.29, nos.3–4, Summer–Fall 2008) Page 29 Online Videos for Women’s Studies Limiting the search to longer videos in either YouTube or Google Video brings down the search results to more manageable numbers and cuts out most of the individual rambles and rants and unsuitable uploads about women. Among the indexed videos over twenty minutes long is the venerable Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s Image of Women (34 minutes),2 used in many introductory women’s studies courses. Instructors of courses in women and science at small colleges without bench scientists could bring “guest lecturers” to class by showing Minority Women in Science, a look at four women scientists from different countries, now working in the United States, who discuss the impact of gender on their professional advancement,3 or a lecture by molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, hosted on the Google campus as part of a Women@Google series.4 Trading on the Female Body: the Exploitation of Women for Eggs,5 another lecture given at Google (this time by Jennifer Lahl, founding director of both the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network and Hands Off Our Ovaries), should stimulate discussion in courses that cover reproductive technology. Everyone knows that the Web is saturated with video clips of Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Obama — some straightforward, some humorous — that students can dissect in courses on women in politics. But it is also possible to get beyond the well-known players and hear from other women in political life. An excellent way to do so is with a three-part video series of Practitioner Roundtables from the conference “Women in Politics: Seeking Office and Making Policy,” held at the University of California, Berkeley, June 9–0, 2006 (co-sponsored by the Institute of Governmental Studies, Berkeley and the University of Virginia Center for Politics).6 The Roundtables, which focused on “Seeking Office,” “Administration and Policy,” and “Governing,” featured Democratic and Republican political consultants, administrators, office seekers, and local, state, and national office holders. Courses covering international women’s issues have a lot to pick from. They might want to start withTo Empower Women: the Fourth U.N. World Conference, Beijing, China, 1995, in which attendees from Zimbabwe, Germany, Papua New Guinea, Iran, the Philippines, Israel, the Solomon Islands, and the United States are interviewed about the many unmet needs of women.7 A 997 production, Bought and Sold: An Investigative Documentary About the International Trade in Women,8 although perhaps dated in focusing on women from the former Soviet Union, nevertheless reveals much from interviews with traffickers as well as with trafficked women and workers who try to help them. There is a series called Women on the Front Line, from the UN Population Fund, focusing on violence against women and girls in various countries, including Austria, Colombia, Moroc- co, Nepal, and Turkey.9 The connections between women, cotton production, and water shortages in India are discussed in Water, Gender, and Social Reproduction,0 a talk by Priti Ramamurthy (University of Washington) in a Global Issues Colloquium on Water and the World at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Behind the La- bels11 tells the plight of the thousands of Chinese and Filipina women who pay fees to work fourteen-hour days in sweatshops on the island of Saipan, a U.S. territory, making garments for retailers such as J. Crew, the GAP, and Polo. Norma Kriger, formerly of Human Rights Watch in Zimbabwe and South Africa, draws on her experi- 2. By Jean Kilbourne, Media Education Foundation, 2002? http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-99336850233767842&ei=-WcUSciWN5Gu- AHzs6ClCg&q. 3. By Karin Koch, 2007, 40 min. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l69EIRoxXX8. 4. August 20, 2008. 62 min. http://youtube.com/?v=irUQEG4BSK4 . 5. In “Google Tech Talks” series, July 4, 2008, 47 min. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZDFLbrjUo. 6. The full conference program is posted at http://www.centerforpolitics.org/programs/nss/WIPindex.htm. Part (8 min.) is at http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=92F8GVRIvw; Part 2 (7 min.) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEKXyzJStVg; and Part 3 (05 min.) at http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=cxWC4ke72o. The videos are also on a Berkeley server and are linked from the conference program, which also has links to audio files for sessions of research roundtables at the same event. 7. By Margot Smith and narrated by Bella Abzug, Off Center Video, 2006, 28 min. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-57633552366069335 &ei=oGgUSdPsFIXc-AHwxfX4Dw&q. 8. By Gillian Caldwell. 4 min. http://www.joost.com/040000k/t/Bought-and-Sold-An-Investigative-Documentary-About-the-International-Trade-in- Women. 9. One can also see these UN Population Fund videos and many others as well on the Fund’s site: http://video.unfpa.org/. 0. November 27, 2006, 69 min. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2822354208384950389&ei=JUYSeGOHaGI-gGz_L3EDQ&q. By Tia Lessin, 200, 46 min. http://www.joost.com/0400005/t/Behind-the-Labels. Page 30 Online Videos for Women’s Studies ences in Gender and Human Rights in Contemporary Africa,2 a talk given at the University of Maryland-Balti- more County that explored many aspects including land, migration, wars, and sexual violence. Clark University’s Cynthia Enloe decodes the war in Iraq in Women and Men in the Iraq War: What Can Feminist Curiosity Reveal?13 at Dickinson College. After a heavy dose of examples of the lack of empowerment, students might enjoy seeing Kenya: Where Women Rule,14 about the Kenyan village of Umoja, home to rape and domestic violence victims, where women make the decisions by consensus, or Arab Women Speak Out: Strategies for Self-Empowerment, a documentary from Research Channel (more on Research Channel below) about a project designed to “empower women and increase their involvement in social development throughout the Arab world.”5 The video has pro- files of women in Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia, and Yemen. What compels a woman to become a suicide bomber? Lisa Ling’s Female Suicide Bombers,6 part of her series on National Geographic Explorer, delves into the reasons. Many prominent women writers are invited to speak on campuses, offering students an opportunity to see and hear the words of living, breathing literary